Awards and citations:


1997: Le Prix du Champagne Lanson Noble Cuvée Award for investigations into Champagne for the Millennium investment scams

2001: Le Prix Champagne Lanson Ivory Award for investdrinks.org

2011: Vindic d'Or MMXI – 'Meilleur blog anti-1855'

2011: Robert M. Parker, Jnr: ‘This blogger...’:

2012: Born Digital Wine Awards: No Pay No Jay – best investigative wine story

2012: International Wine Challenge – Personality of the Year Award




Saturday 2 October 2010

2010 vintage: coping with rot

Grey rot – rejected grapes 

Although the red grapes seem to be withstanding the less favourable weather conditions, the Chenin in Montlouis and Vouvray certainly has an increasing amount of rot meaning that those who pick by hand are able to cut out and sort the good grapes from the rotten. Not something that can be done by machine of course, although there is a new generation of picking machine that does apparently sort good from bad. However, I don't think many producers are equipped with these machines, which cost around 190,000€.

These photos were taken during the first sweep through the vines. The best grapes have been left on the vines to ripen further and will probably go into the Rémus cuvée.

Jacky Blot – sorting grapes in Montlouis 



After sorting: the good grapes 



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim

Keep up the posts about'poor year', 'rot a real problem at harvest' etc as it makes it so much easier to justify the spend on the 2009 vintage.

Jim's Loire said...

Anon. It is worth remembering that the photos here show the first sweep through the vines with the best grapes left on to ripen further.